what she could do with it. Presently she saw a dejected dog coming
prowling down the road, so she sang to him and he gambolled. I saw
him next day strutting by with something of an air. Where there were
trees she went to them and whispered, and they sang the arboreal
song that only trees can hear, and the green buds came peeping out as
stars while yet it is twilight, secretly one by one. She went to gardens
and awaked from dreaming the warm maternal earth. In little patches
bare and desolate she called up like a flame the golden crocus, or its
purple brother like an emperor's ghost. She gladdened the graceless
backs of untidy houses, here with a weed, there with a little grass.
She said to the air, "Be joyous."
Children began to know that daisies blew in unfrequented corners.
Buttonholes began to appear in the coats of the young men. The work
of Spring was accomplished.
HOW THE ENEMY CAME TO THLUNRANA
It had been prophesied of old and foreseen from the ancient days that
its enemy would come upon Thlunrana. And the date of its doom was
known and the gate by which it would enter, yet none had prophesied
of the enemy who he was save that he was of the gods though he dwelt
with men. Meanwhile Thlunrana, that secret lamaserai, that chief
cathedral of wizardry, was the terror of the valley in which it stood
and of all lands round about it. So narrow and high were the windows
and so strange when lighted at night that they seemed to regard men
with the demoniac leer of something that had a secret in the dark. Who
were the magicians and the deputy-magicians and the great arch-wizard
of that furtive place nobody knew, for they went veiled and hooded and
cloaked completely in black.
Though her doom was close upon her and the enemy of prophecy
should come that very night through the open, southward door that
was named the Gate of the Doom, yet that rocky edifice Thlunrana
remained mysterious still, venerable, terrible, dark, and dreadfully
crowned with her doom. It was not often that anyone dared wander
near to Thlunrana by night when the moan of the magicians invoking
we know not Whom rose faintly from inner chambers, scaring the
drifting bats: but on the last night of all the man from the black-thatched
cottage by the five pine-trees came, because he would see Thlunrana
once again before the enemy that was divine, but that dwelt with men,
should come against it and it should be no more. Up the dark valley he
went like a bold man, but his fears were thick upon him; his bravery
bore their weight but stooped a little beneath them. He went in at the
southward gate that is named the Gate of the Doom. He came into a
dark hall, and up a marble stairway passed to see the last of Thlunrana.
At the top a curtain of black velvet hung and he passed into a chamber
heavily hung with curtains, with a gloom in it that was blacker than
anything they could account for. In a sombre chamber beyond, seen
through a vacant archway, magicians with lighted tapers plied their
wizardry and whispered incantations. All the rats in the place were
passing away, going whimpering down the stairway. The man from
the black-thatched cottage passed through that second chamber: the
magicians did not look at him and did not cease to whisper. He passed
from them through heavy curtains still of black velvet and came into a
chamber of black marble where nothing stirred. Only one taper burned
in the third chamber; there were no windows. On the smooth floor and
under the smooth wall a silk pavilion stood with its curtains drawn close
together: this was the holy of holies of that ominous place, its inner
mystery. One on each side of it dark figures crouched, either of men
or women or cloaked stone, or of beasts trained to be silent. When
the awful stillness of the mystery was more than he could bear the
man from the black-thatched cottage by the five pine-trees went up
to the silk pavilion, and with a bold and nervous clutch of the hand
drew one of the curtains aside, and saw the inner mystery, and laughed.
And the prophecy was fulfilled, and Thlunrana was never more a terror
to the valley, but the magicians passed away from their terrific halls and
fled through the open fields wailing and beating their breasts, for
laughter was the enemy that was doomed to come against Thlunrana
through her southward gate (that was named the Gate of the Doom),
and it is of the gods but dwells with man.
A LOSING GAME
Once in a tavern Man met face to skull with Death. Man entered
gaily but Death gave no greeting, he sat with his jowl morosely over
an ominous wine.
"Come, come," said Man, "we have been antagonists long, and if I
were losing yet I should not be surly."
But Death remained unfriendly watching his bowl of wine and gave
no word in answer.
Then Man solicitously moved nearer to him and, speaking cheerily
still, "Come, come," he said again, "you must not resent defeat."
And still Death was gloomy and cross and sipped at his infamous
wine and would not look up at Man and would not be companionable.
But Man hated gloom either in beast or god, and it made him
unhappy to see his adversary's discomfort, all the more because he
was the cause, and still he tried to cheer him.
"Have you not slain the Dinatherium?" he said. "Have you not put out
the Moon? Why! you will beat me yet."
And with a dry and barking sound Death wept and nothing said; and
presently Man arose and went wondering away; for he knew not if
Death wept out of pity for his opponent, or because he knew that he
should not have such sport again when the old game was over and
Man was gone, or whether because perhaps, for some hidden reason,
he could never repeat on Earth his triumph over the Moon.
TAKING UP PICADILLY
Going down Picadilly one day and nearing Grosvenor Place I saw,
if my memory is not at fault, some workmen with their coats off--or
so they seemed. They had pickaxes in their hands and wore corduroy
trousers and that little leather band below the knee that goes by the
astonishing name of "York-to-London."
They seemed to be working with peculiar vehemence, so that I
stopped and asked one what they were doing.
"We are taking up Picadilly," he said to me.
"But at this time of year?" I said. "Is it usual in June?"
"We are not what we seem," said he.
"Oh, I see," I said, "you are doing it for a joke."
"Well, not exactly that," he answered me.
"For a bet?" I said.
"Not precisely," said he.
And then I looked at the bit that they had already picked, and
though it was broad daylight over my head it was darkness down
there, all full of the southern stars.
"It was noisy and bad and we grew aweary of it," said he that wore
corduroy trousers. "We are not what we appear."
They were taking up Picadilly altogether.
AFTER THE FIRE
When that happened which had been so long in happening and the
world hit a black, uncharted star, certain tremendous creatures out
of some other world came peering among the cinders to see if there
were anything there that it were worth while to remember. They
spoke of the great things that the world was known to have had;
they mentioned the mammoth. And presently they saw man's temples,
silent and windowless, staring like empty skulls.
"Some great thing has been here," one said, "in these huge places."
"It was the mammoth," said one. "Something greater than he," said
another.
And then they found that the greatest thing in the world had been
the dreams of man.
THE CITY
In time as well as space my fancy roams far from here. It led me
once to the edge of certain cliffs that were low and red and rose
up out of a desert: a little way off in the desert there was a city. It
was evening, and I sat and watched the city.
Presently I saw men by threes and fours come softly stealing out
of that city's gate to the number of about twenty. I heard the hum
of men's voices speaking at evening.
"It is well they are gone," they said. "It is well they are gone. We
can do business now. It is well they are gone." And the men that
had left the city sped away over the sand and so passed into the
twilight.
"Who are these men?" I said to my glittering leader.
"The poets," my fancy answered. "The poets and artists."
"Why do they steal away?" I said to him. "And why are the people
glad that they have gone?"
He said: "It must be some doom that is going to fall on the city,
something has warned them and they have stolen away. Nothing
may warn the people."
I heard the wrangling voices, glad with commerce, rise up from
the city. And then I also departed, for there was an ominous look
on the face of the sky.
And only a thousand years later I passed that way, and there was
nothing, even among the weeds, of what had been that city.
THE FOOD OF DEATH
Death was sick. But they brought him bread that the modern bakers
make, whitened with alum, and the tinned meats of Chicago, with a
pinch of our modern substitute for salt. They carried him into the
dining-room of a great hotel (in that close atmosphere Death breathed
more freely), and there they gave him their cheap Indian tea. They
brought him a bottle of wine that they called champagne. Death
drank it up. They brought a newspaper and looked up the patent
medicines; they gave him the foods that it recommended for invalids,
and a little medicine as prescribed in the paper. They gave him some
milk and borax, such as children drink in England.
Death arose ravening, strong, and strode again through the cities.
THE LONELY IDOL
I had from a friend an old outlandish stone, a little swine-faced idol
to whom no one prayed.
And when I saw his melancholy case as he sat cross-legged at
receipt of prayer, holding a little scourge that the years had broken
(and no one heeded the scourge and no one prayed and no one
came with squealing sacrifice; and he had been a god), then I took
pity on the little forgotten thing and prayed to it as perhaps they prayed
long since, before the coming of the strange dark ships, and humbled
myself and said:
"O idol, idol of the hard pale stone, invincible to the years, O
scourge-holder, give ear for behold I pray.
"O little pale-green image whose wanderings are from far, know
thou that here in Europe and in other lands near by, too soon there
pass from us the sweets and song and the lion strength of youth:
too soon do their cheeks fade, their hair grow grey and our beloved
die; too brittle is beauty, too far off is fame and the years are gathered
too soon; there are leaves, leaves falling, everywhere falling; there is
autumn among men, autumn and reaping; failure there is, struggle,
dying and weeping, and all that is beautiful hath not remained but is
even as the glory of morning upon the water.
"Even our memories are gathered too with the sound of the ancient
voices, the pleasant ancient voices that come to our ears no more;
the very gardens of our childhood fade, and there dims with the speed
of the years even the mind's own eye.
"O be not any more the friend of Time, for the silent hurry of his
malevolent feet have trodden down what's fairest; I almost hear the
whimper of the years running behind him hound-like, and it takes few
to tear us.
"All that is beautiful he crushes down as a big man tramples daises,
all that is fairest. How very fair are the little children of men. It is
autumn with all the world, and the stars weep to see it.
"Therefore no longer be the friend of Time, who will not let us be,
and be not good to him but pity us, and let lovely things live on for
the sake of our tears."
Thus prayed I out of compassion one windy day to the snout-faced
idol to whom no one kneeled.
THE SPHINX IN THEBES (MASSACHUSETTS)
There was a woman in a steel-built city who had all that money
could buy, she had gold and dividends and trains and houses, and
she had pets to play with, but she had no sphinx.
So she besought them to bring her a live sphinx; and therefore they
went to the menageries, and then to the forests and the desert places,
and yet could find no sphinx.
And she would have been content with a little lion but that one was
already owned by a woman she knew; so they had to search the
world again for a sphinx.
And still there was none.
But they were not men that it is easy to baffle, and at last they found
a sphinx in a desert at evening watching a ruined temple whose gods
she had eaten hundreds of years ago when her hunger was on her.
And they cast chains on her, who was still with an ominous stillness,
and took her westwards with them and brought her home.
And so the sphinx came to the steel-built city.
And the woman was very glad that she owned a sphinx: but the
sphinx stared long into her eyes one day, and softly asked a riddle
of the woman.
And the woman could not answer, and she died.
And the sphinx is silent again and none knows what she will do.
THE REWARD
One's spirit goes further in dreams than it does by day. Wandering
once by night from a factory city I came to the edge of Hell.
The place was foul with cinders and cast-off things, and jagged,
half-buried things with shapeless edges, and there was a huge angel
with a hammer building in plaster and steel. I wondered what he did
in that dreadful place. I hesitated, then asked him what he was
building. "We are adding to Hell," he said, "to keep pace with the
times." "Don't be too hard on them," I said, for I had just come out
of a compromising age and a weakening country. The angel did not
answer. "It won't be as bad as the old hell, will it?" I said. "Worse,"
said the angel.
"How can you reconcile it with your conscience as a Minister of
Grace," I said, "to inflict such a punishment?" (They talked like this
in the city whence I had come and I could not avoid the habit of it.)
"They have invented a new cheap yeast," said the angel.
I looked at the legend on the walls of the hell that the angel was
building, the words were written in flame, every fifteen seconds they
changed their color, "Yeasto, the great new yeast, it builds up body
and brain, and something more."
"They shall look at it for ever," the angel said.
"But they drove a perfectly legitimate trade," I said, "the law allowed
it."
The angel went on hammering into place the huge steel uprights.
"You are very revengeful," I said. "Do you never rest from doing
this terrible work?"
"I rested one Christmas Day," the angel said, "and looked and
saw little children dying of cancer. I shall go on now until the fires
are lit."
"It is very hard to prove," I said, "that the yeast is as bad as you
think."
"After all," I said, "they must live."
And the angel made no answer but went on building his hell.
THE TROUBLE IN LEAFY GREEN STREET
She went to the idol-shop in Moleshill Street, where the old man
mumbles, and said: "I want a god to worship when it is wet."
The old man reminded her of the heavy penalties that rightly attach
to idolatry and, when he had enumerated all, she answered him as
was meet: "Give me a god to worship when it is wet."
And he went to the back places of his shop and sought out and
brought her a god. The same was carved of grey stone and wore a
propitious look and was named, as the old man mumbled, The God
of Rainy Cheerfulness.
Now it may be that long confinement to the house affects adversely
the liver, or these things may be of the soul, but certain it is that on
a rainy day her spirits so far descended that those cheerful creatures
came within sight of the Pit, and, having tried cigarettes to no good
end, she bethought her of Moleshill Street and the mumbling man.
He brought the grey idol forth and mumbled of guarantees, although
he put nothing on paper, and she paid him there and then his
preposterous price and took the idol away.
And on the next wet day that there ever was she prayed to the
grey-stone idol that she had bought, the God of Rainy Cheerfulness
(who knows with what ceremony or what lack of it?), and so
brought down on her in Leafy Green Street, in the preposterous
house at the corner, that doom of which all men speak.
THE MIST
The mist said unto the mist: "Let us go up into the Downs." And
the mist came up weeping.
And the mist went into the high places and the hollows.
And clumps of trees in the distance stood ghostly in the haze.
But I went to a prophet, one who loved the Downs, and I said to
him: "Why does the mist come up weeping into the Downs when it
goes into the high places and the hollows?"
And he answered: "The mist is the company of a multitude of souls
who never saw the Downs, and now are dead. Therefore they come
up weeping into the Downs, who are dead and never saw them."
FURROW-MAKER
He was all in black, but his friend was dressed in brown, members
of two old families.
"Is there any change in the way you build your houses?" said he in
black.
"No change," said the other. "And you?"
"We change not," he said.
A man went by in the distance riding a bicycle.
"He is always changing," said the one in black, "of late almost every
century. He is uneasy. Always changing."
"He changes the way he builds his house, does he not?" said the
brown one.
"So my family say," said the other. "They say he has changed of late."
"They say he takes much to cities?" the brown one said.
"My cousin who lives in belfries tells me so," said the black one.
"He says he is much in cities."
"And there he grows lean?" said the brown one.
"Yes, he grows lean."
"Is it true what they say?" said the brown one.
"Caw," said the black one.
"Is it true that he cannot live many centuries?"
"No, no," said the black one. "Furrow-maker will not die. We must
not lose furrow-maker. He has been foolish of late, he has played
with smoke and is sick. His engines have wearied him and his cities
are evil. Yes, he is very sick. But in a few centuries he will forget
his folly and we shall not lose furrow-maker. Time out of mind he
has delved and my family have got their food from the raw earth
behind him. He will not die."
"But they say, do they not?" said the brown one, "his cities are
noisome, and that he grows sick in them and can run no longer, and
that it is with him as it is with us when we grow too many, and the
grass has the bitter taste in the rainy season, and our young grow
bloated and die."
"Who says it?" replied the black one.
"Pigeon," the brown one answered. "He came back all dirty.
And Hare went down to the edge of the cities once. He says it
too. Man was too sick to chase him. He thinks that Man will die,
and his wicked friend Dog with him. Dog, he will die. That nasty
fellow Dog. He will die too, the dirty fellow!"
"Pigeon and Hare!" said the black one. "We shall not lose
furrow-maker."
"Who told you he will not die?" his brown friend said.
"Who told me!" the black one said. "My family and his have
understood each other times out of mind. We know what follies
will kill each other and what each may survive, and I say that
furrow-maker will not die."
"He will die," said the brown one.
"Caw," said the other.
And Man said in his heart: "Just one invention more. There is
something I want to do with petrol yet, and then I will give it all
up and go back to the woods."
LOBSTER SALAD
I was climbing round the perilous outside of the Palace of
Colquonhombros. So far below me that in the tranquil twilight
and clear air of those lands I could only barely see them lay the
craggy tops of the mountains.
It was along no battlements or terrace edge I was climbing, but
on the sheer face of the wall itself, getting what foothold I could
where the boulders joined.
Had my feet been bare I was done, but though I was in my
night-shirt I had on stout leather boots, and their edges somehow
held in those narrow cracks. My fingers and wrists were aching.
Had it been possible to stop for a moment I might have been lured
to give a second look at the fearful peaks of the mountains down
there in the twilight, and this must have been fatal.
That the thing was all a dream is beside the point. We have fallen
in dreams before, but it is well known that if in one of those falls
you ever hit the ground--you die: I had looked at those menacing
mountaintops and knew well that such a fall as the one I feared
must have such a termination. Then I went on.
It is strange what different sensations there can be in different
boulders--every one gleaming with the same white light and every
one chosen to match the rest by minions of ancient kings--when
your life depends on the edges of every one you come to. Those
edges seemed strangely different. It was of no avail to overcome
the terror of one, for the next would give you a hold in quite a
different way or hand you over to death in a different manner.
Some were too sharp to hold and some too flush with the wall,
those whose hold was the best crumbled the soonest; each rock
had its different terror: and then there were those things that followed
behind me.
And at last I came to a breach made long ago by earthquake,
lightning or war: I should have had to go down a thousand feet
to get round it and they would come up with me while I was doing
that, for certain sable apes that I have not mentioned as yet, things
that had tigerish teeth and were born and bred on that wall, had
pursued me all the evening. In any case I could have gone no
farther, nor did I know what the king would do along whose wall
I was climbing. It was time to drop and be done with it or stop and
await those apes.
And then it was that I remembered a pin, thrown carelessly down
out of an evening-tie in another world to the one where grew that
glittering wall, and lying now if no evil chance had removed it on a
chest of drawers by my bed. The apes were very close, and hurrying,
for they knew my fingers were slipping, and the cruel peaks of those
infernal mountains seemed surer of me than the apes. I reached out
with a desperate effort of will towards where the pin lay on the chest
of drawers. I groped about. I found it! I ran it into my arm. Saved!
THE RETURN OF THE EXILES
The old man with a hammer and the one-eyed man with a spear were
seated by the roadside talking as I came up the hill.
"It isn't as though they hadn't asked us," the one with the hammer said.
"There ain't no more than twenty as knows about it," said the other.
"Twenty's twenty," said the first.
"After all these years," said the one-eyed man with the spear. "After
all these years. We might go back just once."
"O' course we might," said the other.
Their clothes were old even for laborers, the one with the hammer
had a leather apron full of holes and blackened, and their hands
looked like leather. But whatever they were they were English, and
this was pleasant to see after all the motors that had passed me that
day with their burden of mixed and doubtful nationalities.
When they saw me the one with the hammer touched his greasy cap.
"Might we make so bold, sir," he said, "as the ask the way to
Stonehenge?"
"We never ought to go," mumbled the other plaintively. "There's
not more than twenty as knows, but...."
I was bicycling there myself to see the place so I pointed out the
way and rode on at once, for there was something so utterly servile
about them both that I did not care for their company. They seemed
by their wretched mien to have been persecuted or utterly neglected
for many years, I thought that very likely they had done long terms
of penal servitude.
When I came to Stonehenge I saw a group of about a score of men
standing among the stones. They asked me with some solemnity if
I was expecting anyone, and when I said No they spoke to me no
more. It was three miles back where I left those strange old men,
but I had not been in the stone circle long when they appeared,
coming with great strides along the road. When they saw them all
the people took off their hats and acted very strangely, and I saw
that they had a goat which they led up then to the old altar stone.
And the two old men came up with their hammer and spear and
began apologizing plaintively for the liberty they had taken in coming
back to that place, and all the people knelt on the grass before them.
And then still kneeling they killed the goat by the altar, and when the
two old men saw this they came up with many excuses and eagerly
sniffed the blood. And at first this made them happy. But soon the
one with the spear began to whimper. "It used to be men," he
lamented. "It used to be men."
And the twenty men began looking uneasily at each other, and the
plaint of the one-eyed man went on in that tearful voice, and all of
a sudden they all looked at me. I do not know who the two old men
were or what any of them were doing, but there are moments when
it is clearly time to go, and I left them there and then. And just as I
got up on to my bicycle I heard the plaintive voice of the one with the
hammer apologizing for the liberty he had taken in coming back to
Stonehenge.
"But after all these years," I heard him crying, "After all these
years...."
And the one with the spear said: "Yes, after three thousand years...."
NATURE AND TIME